It is known to provide wall hangers and support plate combinations whereby the hangers may be released from the support plate and interchanged when not in use: see U.S. Pat. No. 1,848,937 issued to Grey Iron Casting Company, U.S. Pat. No. 2,103,106 to Anton Yurkovitch or the recent U.S. Pat. No. 4,372,450 in the name of Basic Line, inc.
It is also known to provide wall hangers or shelves and support plates combinations whereby the assembly is of modular construction: the horizontal length thereof may be extended dependent upon the need, the available area and the number of articles to be supported or hung: see U.S. Pat. No. 1,599,653 to Cranston.
However, a common problem to known wall hangers is the clearance in front of the wall when the hanger is in use, i.e. mounted to its support plate on the wall. Also, the support plate, when the hanger is not connected thereto, still tends to require some relatively large clearance in front of the wall, thus precluding effective use of available space for other purposes. Moreover, these wall support plates, which are usually outwardly anchored to the wall by screws driven thereinto, show off the screw heads which outwardly project therefrom: this is not only aesthetically unacceptable, but could also produce injuries to persons sliding their hand/limb against the surface of the hangerless plate. Still another drawback of prior art is that modular hangers are not very effective in their visual appeal and in space utilization.